New Books in Biology and Evolution
Interviews with biologists and evolutionary scientists about their new books
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 54 minutes
- Episodes
- 445
- Years Active
- 2009 - 2025
Charan Ranganath, "Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters" (Doubleday, 2024)
A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters (Doubleday, 2024), pioneering neuroscientist and…
01:02:11 |
Sat 27 Apr 2024
Bobby Cherayil, "The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
Most of us appreciate the importance of the immune system yet have very little knowledge about how it actually works. If you fall into this camp and are curious to learn more about this intricate sys…
01:07:16 |
Tue 16 Apr 2024
Miriam Piilonen, "Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human" (Oxford UP, 2024)
What did historical evolutionists such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer have to say about music? What role did music play in their evolutionary theories? What were the values and limits of these…
01:17:57 |
Mon 15 Apr 2024
Rasmus Winther, "Our Genes: A Philosophical Perspective on Human Evolutionary Genomics" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Situated at the intersection of natural science and philosophy, Our Genes: A Philosophical Perspective on Human Evolutionary Genomics (Cambridge University Press, 2023) explores historical practices,…
01:09:11 |
Sun 14 Apr 2024
Max Bennett, "A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains" (Mariner Books, 2023)
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains (Mariner Books, 2023) tells two fascinating stories. One is the evolution of nervous systems. It starte…
01:09:08 |
Mon 01 Apr 2024
Joseph Cone, "Seeing Opera Anew: A Cultural and Biological Perspective" (Routledge, 2023)
What people ultimately want from music-drama, audience research suggests, is to be absorbed in a story that engages their feelings, even moves them deeply, and that may lead them to insights about li…
01:03:06 |
Sun 03 Mar 2024
Sten Grillner, "The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function" (MIT Press, 2023)
C. S. Sherrington said “All the brain can do is to move things". The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function (MIT Press, 2023) shows how much the brain can do "just" by moving th…
01:19:11 |
Fri 23 Feb 2024
Rob Percival, "The Meat Paradox: Eating, Empathy, and the Future of Meat" (Pegasus, 2022)
Our future diet will be shaped by diverse forces. It will be shaped by novel technologies, by geopolitical tensions, and the evolution of cultural preferences, by shocks to the status quo-- pandemics…
00:47:23 |
Mon 12 Feb 2024
Joshua Paul Dale, "Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World" (Profile Books, 2023)
Why are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters?
Cuteness is an area where cultu…
00:32:09 |
Sat 10 Feb 2024
Michael Devitt, "Biological Essentialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
What makes a species a species? Aristotle answered the species question by positing unchanging essences, properties that all and only members of a species shared. Individuals belonged to a species by…
01:07:05 |
Sat 10 Feb 2024
Use of Bacteriophages as Natural Antimicrobials to Manage Bacterial Pathogens in Aquaculture in Vietnam and Australia
Aquaculture is the fastest-growing protein production industry globally, with Vietnam one of the top producers and exporters of seafood products. In Vietnam, aquaculture is seen as a means of protect…
00:26:41 |
Fri 02 Feb 2024
Ludovic Slimak, "The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
What do we really know about our cousins, the Neanderthals?
For over a century we saw Neanderthals as inferior to Homo Sapiens. More recently, the pendulum swung the other way and they are generally …
00:40:24 |
Fri 26 Jan 2024
The Future of Images of Human Evolution
We are all familiar with the “march of progress” image - the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reachin…
00:32:15 |
Sat 20 Jan 2024
Thom van Dooren, "The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds" (Columbia UP, 2019)
Crows can be found almost everywhere that people are, from tropical islands to deserts and arctic forests, from densely populated cities to suburbs and farms. Across these diverse landscapes, many sp…
01:10:15 |
Sat 06 Jan 2024
Matthew Gutmann, "Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short" (Basic Books, 2019)
In Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (Basic Books, 2019), Matthew Gutmann examines how cultural expectations viewing men as violent and sex driven becomes a self-fulfilling prop…
01:02:03 |
Tue 02 Jan 2024
Jonathan B. Losos, "The Cat's Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa" (Viking, 2023)
The domestic cat--your cat--has, from its evolutionary origins in Africa, been transformed in comparatively little time into one of the most successful and diverse species on the planet. Jonathan Los…
00:39:31 |
Wed 20 Dec 2023
Mark Munsterhjelm, "Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
Forensic genetic technologies are popularly conceptualized and revered as important tools of justice. The research and development of these technologies, however, has been accomplished through the ca…
00:33:15 |
Sun 10 Dec 2023
Shelly Kagan, "How to Count Animals, More Or Less" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Most people agree that animals count morally, but how exactly should we take animals into account? A prominent stance in contemporary ethical discussions is that animals have the same moral status th…
00:55:24 |
Wed 06 Dec 2023
John Perlin, "The Forest Journey: The Story of Trees and Civilization" (Patagonia, 2023)
A Foundational Conservation Story Revived.
Ancient writers observed that forests always recede as civilizations develop and grow. The great Roman poet Ovid wrote that before civilization began, “even…
00:25:42 |
Mon 04 Dec 2023
Coleen T. Murphy, "How We Age: The Science of Longevity" (Princeton UP, 2023)
All of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. In How We Age: The Science of Longevity (Princeton UP, 2023), Coleen Murphy shows how recent research on longevity and…
00:31:35 |
Fri 01 Dec 2023
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